The veil between worlds tore open, and the cosmos screamed.
A rift of bleeding red and void-black light split the skies of Hel. It wasn't a portal conjured by sorcery, nor a technological wormhole—it was a wound. Reality, as this universe knew it, had been injured, and from that wound came something ancient, something foul, something forgotten.
The Scarlet King had arrived.
Hel, a realm of mist and silence, writhed as his presence spread. The icy winds stilled. Rivers of the dead boiled with unease. The realm of Hela—Asgard's dark daughter—had known no intruder for millennia. Yet now, it bent and groaned under the weight of something even death feared to name.
Souls screamed. The trees of the dead forests withered. The bones of ancient warriors cracked as the Scarlet King's feet touched the frost-covered earth. He did not walk—he manifested, piece by piece, a shifting mass of crown, cloak, and crawling shadow. He had no need to announce himself. The realm knew. And so did its Queen.
Far above, in her obsidian throne, Hela stirred.
She had felt him long before he appeared—his arrival was like a cancer blooming through her realm, an infection in the very essence of decay. But he was not mortal. Not god. Not demon.
He was beyond.
Hela rose from her throne, her antlered helm settling atop her raven hair as she summoned her blade. Her cloak billowed like dying smoke, and her wolves snarled in the shadows. With each step, her presence warped the stone beneath her. A goddess of death in her full majesty.
She descended into the mists, toward the heart of the disruption.
---
The Scarlet King stood at the edge of a cliff, overlooking a valley filled with silent, unmoving souls. They didn't scream anymore. They watched.
His form was indistinct—shifting between shapes, barely contained within humanoid boundaries. Crimson threads swirled around his being like veins feeding from the void. His eyes were burning coals, deep and bottomless.
"You bleed into my domain like a disease," Hela's voice rang across the land, sharp as steel and cold as the grave.
The Scarlet King did not turn.
"This place is stagnant. Frozen. Waiting for meaning that will never come."
"You dare?" she hissed, appearing behind him in a blink. Her blade was at his throat, necrotic energy humming.
"I do more than dare." He finally turned, his voice like layered whispers. "I am the end of daring. The death of defiance."
Their gazes locked—queen and king, ruin and abyss.
Hela narrowed her eyes. "I have ruled this realm for eons. Who are you to enter it unbidden?"
"A king," he replied. "But not of lands or thrones. A king of endings. Of forgotten gods. I am the echo that precedes silence."
She circled him, blade still raised, but her grip less sure. There was no fear in her—not truly—but there was caution. Curiosity.
"You are no god of this world," she said.
"No. I am older than this universe. I watched its birth from the other side of the veil. And now I have come to watch it end."
The blade lowered.
"You seek to destroy this universe?" she asked.
"I seek to remind it of truth. That all things end. That gods die. That light is but a fleeting lie."
She stared at him for a long moment. "You sound like me, once. Before I became queen."
He tilted his head. "You became queen in a cage."
Her jaw clenched. "Careful."
"I only speak what is," he said. "You rule the dead, but are ruled by the living. By their stories. Their balance. You deserve more."
She turned away then, stepping toward the cliff's edge. Below, the souls remained still.
"I have heard a thousand lies from conquerors and tyrants. What makes your offer different?"
"There is no offer," he said, stepping beside her. "There is only truth. You see it, don't you? In me."
She looked up at him. And she did see it.
Not just power. Not just madness.
Freedom.
For all her sovereignty, she had always been a prisoner—of Odin, of fate, of stories. The Scarlet King did not promise escape. He was escape. From fate. From narrative. From everything.
"I should kill you," she said.
He smiled.
"You won't."
"Why not?"
"Because you don't want to be alone anymore."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was heavy. Full of unspoken things.
Hela's blade faded from her hand.
"You speak like someone who understands me," she said quietly.
"I am you," he replied. "From a deeper hell. A longer war."
They stood together, overlooking the valley of the dead, not as enemies. Not yet as lovers. But as two truths that had never found another equal.
"I will not kneel," she warned.
"Good," he said. "Queens should not kneel."
With a flick of her wrist, she summoned a bridge of bone and shadow beneath them, leading back to her throne. She walked it slowly, but without looking back.
"Come then, King of Nothing," she said. "Let us see if your silence is louder than my death."
He followed.
The souls of the dead watched, whispering.
And in that moment, the realm of Hel did not belong to Hela alone.